Massive Cave-in -- Workers Abandoned

Well, EFCA got the rug pulled out from under it last week. That's when key Senate Democrats caved in and announced they couldn't support the Employee Free Choice Act in its current incarnation. EFCA is -- or was -- a bill that would make it easier for workers to form unions and the looming fight over it, pitting unions against American business, would've created a political and media war that would've made the Clintons' 1994 foray into health-care reform look like a Quaker picnic. The key word here is "fight" -- the mere mention of that noun had liberals reaching for smelling salts. Especially millionaire Senator Dianne Feinstein of California who, during the Bush ice age, was all for working people -- when her stance had no chance of being translated into legislation. (She was a sponsor of a previous version of EFCA.)

The official Democratic explanation has been that those mean old Republicans had threatened to filibuster the bill, whose most horrendous provision is one that would allow workers at a company to sign cards indicating their desire to join a union -- once there was a majority of employee signatures, the union could be formed. For the past year Chamber of Commerce types have been railing against this and other provisions as the harbinger of an American Red Terror. Democrats and moderate Republicans had their own reasons for abandoning EFCA.